Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/61

42 custodian of a library of books on sociology could have seen that with half an astigmatic eye. Her copper-colored hair flashed alluringly in that sunny car; the curve of her cheek would have created a sensation in the neighborhood where burning Sappho loved and sang. Dick Minot's heart beat faster, repeating the performance it had staged when she boarded the train at Jacksonville.

Beautiful, yes—but she fidgeted. She had fidgeted madly in the station at Jacksonville during that hour's wait; now even more madly she bounced about on that plush seat. She opened and shut magazines, she straightened her pleasant little hat, she gazed in agony out the window. Beauty such as hers should have been framed in a serene and haughty dignity. Hers happened to be framed in a frenzy of fidget.

In its infinite wisdom, the train saw fit to start again. With a sigh of relief, the girl sank bade upon her seat of torture. Mr. Minot turned again to the uneventful landscape. More yellow sand, more bearded oaks and evergreens. And in a moment, the family of razor-backs, plodding